More On Preferences and Freedom

Patrocinador:
I am grateful to Prasanta K: Pattanaik for many stimulating discussions and helpful suggestions. Several improvements are due to the comments of Salvador Barberá, Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe and anonymous referee. Financial support from DGESIC project PB-98-024 is gratefully acknowledge

Resumen:

The paper seeks to fonnalize the notion of effective freedom or the
freedom to realize meaningful choices. The definition of meaningful choice
used in this paper is based on the preference orderings that a reasonable person
may have. 1 argue that only alternatThe paper seeks to fonnalize the notion of effective freedom or the
freedom to realize meaningful choices. The definition of meaningful choice
used in this paper is based on the preference orderings that a reasonable person
may have. 1 argue that only alternatives that can be selected by a reasonable
person from the set 01' all possible alternatiV'es provide a meaningful
choice. 1 discuss this approach and provide an axiomatization of the cardinality
rule and two lexicographic versions of this rule in this context.[+][-]